Johann Hari on the rise of open gay parenting in the UK and the research indicating no averse effects for children:

The children of gay couples are desperately and passionately wanted. They are, by definition, planned, with parents who have to go to a great deal of hassle and heart-searching before they are created. Compare that the number of kids idly conceived in a five-minute shag at a bus stop.

But obviously, every parent wants the best for their child – and many gay parents were inhibited by the idea that their child would be somehow disadvantaged. Would my son be picked on? Would my daughter be confused by having gay parents? It would not be worth repairing our self-esteem at the expense of damaging our children’s.

Now the evidence is in. There have been over a hundred scientific studies of the grown-up children of gay parents – and they overwhelmingly find the same thing. Professor Ellen C. Perrin, MD of Tufts University School of Medicine explains: “The vast consensus of all the studies shows that children of same-sex parents do as well as children whose parents are heterosexual in every way.”

Some 90 percent of them grow up to be straight – just like in every family. They are no more or less like to be abused, depressed, or confused. And they love their parents, like we all do. “What is striking is that there are very consistent findings in these studies,” Perrin says.

Under the sheer concrete weight of this scientific evidence, anybody who continues to oppose gay parents is letting their prejudice cloud their judgement. When the Vatican calls gay parents “gravely immoral”, they condemn only themselves.